Sitecore Events & Announcements

Spring has well and truly sprung, and that can only mean one thing for the Sitecore community in Europe – it’s time for SUGCON Europe 2025! 

Antwerp, Belgium was the scene of this year’s gathering on the 3^rd and 4^th April and, as always, it proved to be an incredibly interesting couple of days hearing from the Sitecore team as well as partners and customers from around the world, not just Europe. 

Talks about AI and Sitecore Stream in particular dominated proceedings, as well as the usual suspects like XM Cloud and Content Hub. Here are some of the Remarkable team’s highlights. 

Keynote: Powering the Future of Sitecore Together 

Dave O’Flanagan (Sitecore CEO), Roger Connolly (Sitecore CPO), and Danny Robinson (Sitecore CTO) 

It was fitting that we were in a room called the Darwin Hall for a Keynote with a theme of evolution and adaptability. Sitecore CEO, Dave O’Flanagan kicked things off and took us through the Sitecore vision of being an “AI-first Intelligent DXP” with Sitecore Stream at the heart of things. Roger Connolly (Sitecore Chief Product Officer) touched on the changing face of Search in the zero click AI age and showed off some of the AI-powered A/B testing, personalisation, auto-tagging, and language translation tools that are now or soon will be, available to Sitecore customers. Lastly, Danny Robinson (Sitecore CTO) took us through the roadmap and some key upcoming dates to keep an eye out for (expect big things in June). 

30 min of AI in Sitecore 

Morten Ljungberg, Sales Engineer at Sitecore 

Sitecore Sales Engineer, Morten Ljungberg, gave a cracking overview of Sitecore Stream features in a demo website, showcasing the Brand Kit and Assistant features in the Stream portal, as well as a detailed look into how Stream features work in XM Cloud, Content Hub DAM, Content Hub Operations, Search, Personalize, and CDP, including everything from content generation to translation, auto-tagging, insights, and testing. 

Workshop: XM/XP to XM Cloud Best Practices 

Jeroen Feyaerts and Katharina Luger, Sitecore Solution Architects 

For the very first slot of the day, Jeroen Feyaerts and Katharina Luger, both Solution Architects at Sitecore, led a workshop on the best practices and considerations when undertaking a migrating from XP to XM Cloud, including topics like feature gap analysis, migration paths, hosting, personalisation, testing, and analytics, as well as the conversations that need to be had around XP-centric tools like Forms, EXM, and xDB that either don’t exist, or are completely different in XM Cloud. 

Building the Future: Extending XM Cloud with Marketplace Apps 

Spyros Misichronis, Architect around the Marketplace 

Liz Nelson, Senior Director, Product (Product Lead of XM Cloud) 

Sitecore XM Cloud Product Lead, Liz Nelson, took us on a journey through Sitecore’s Marketplace of apps, breaking down the different between the public marketplace versus private custom applications. The audience got a look into developing extensions using the Marketplace SDK and integrating them with XM Cloud’s APIs. Marketplace Architect, Spyros Misichronis, complimented the talk with a live demo. 

Main stage demo by CI Hub 

Andreas Michalski, CEO and Founder 

CI Hub CEO and Founder, Andreas Michalski, gave the audience a first-hand look into the CI Hub’s connector ecosystem that opens up Sitecore Content Hub into over twenty corporate applications. The tool can do things like pull assets directly from Sitecore Content Hub into Photoshop, let you select assets from Content Hub in Outlook emails, and extend your Desktop to be able to pull up Content Hub assets as you would from your device’s folders. Impressive stuff. 

Leading in the new era of AI 

Hans Verbeeck, Technology Manager at Microsoft 

Microsoft Technology Manager, Hans Verbeeck, spoke about Microsoft’s vision on the evolution of AI, from agents able to complete repetitive tasks (e.g. Input new hire information into HR system) and answer straightforward questions (“What is the dress code in the office?”) to being able to take action (“Order a laptop for a new employee”) and collaboratively solve complex tasks (“Onboard 5 employees by Monday”). Hans touched on the Copilots available in Teams, Outlook, Word, PPT, and Excel, as well as highlighting the Azure AI Foundry’s 1,800+ models, and left us with the gem that “Copilots are for humans, Agents are for processes.” 

Re-inventing governance with AI: accessibility, branding, and digital right compliance 

Vasiliy Fomichev, Head of Digital Solutions and Co-Founder at Zont Digital 

Zont Digital Co-Founder and Head of Digital Solutions, Vasiliy Fomichev, gave a live demo on how to create a simple Agentic workflow in N8n to translate content in XM Cloud. He spoke of the importance of creating a “Clean model” for training your data and outlined the Data Learning Effect (DLE) of providing constant feedback to refine your model, as well as using a “human in the loop” for critical workflows to make sure there is a human overseeing the work at important points. 

Sitecore Stream in Platform DXP (PaaS) 

Vignesh Vishwanath, Product Manager at Sitecore 

Sitecore Product Manager, Vignesh Vishwanath, gave the audience a look into how Sitecore Stream features work in a Platform DXP / PaaS setting with Sitecore XP. In this context, Stream is a module available on-prem and PaaS that you can download and install and is available on Sitecore XP 10.2 and above. The tool can generate content and variants based on the prompts you give it in Content Editor and can help improve writing, fix spelling and grammar, make the content shorter or longer, and even change tone. 

Pairing Sitecore CDP with Salesforce Data Cloud for the Ultimate Customer 360 

Emily Lord, Sitecore Account Executive at Horizontal Digital 

Horizontal Digital Sitecore Account Executive, Emily Lord, spoke about how Sitecore CDP and Salesforce Data Cloud can work together despite being sometimes considered competing tools. Emily took the audience through the similarities and differences between the two, as well as looking at what each platform is best suited to doing. The talk touched on how Unified Customer Profiles can give brands a 360-degree view of their customer and the new Gensights (Generative Insights) Sitecore Stream feature for CDP. 

Navigating through Sitecore’s personalization archipelago 

Szymon Kuzniak, Senior Sitecore Developer at ACTUM Digital 

ACTUM Digital Senior Sitecore Developer, Szymon Kuzniak, gave the audience a live demo of how personalisation works in both Sitecore XP and Sitecore Personalize. Szymon created a basic Page View personalisation in XP using Profile Cards and Pattern Cards and then created a personalized Web Experience in Sitecore Personalize that included a custom template by adding the HTML code for a component while also showcasing the Design view that marketers can use to visualize the components they wish to personalise. 

It was great to attend Sitecore’s Post-Symposium Partner Summit last night in London, hosted by James Kirkland.

• We heard from Sitecore’s EMEA President Agata Nowakowska
• Got an overview of the new AI features that Sitecore Stream has to offer from Chris Purcell
• A look at the product roadmap from Daniela Militaru
• And an insight into partner relations from Global VP for Partners & Alliances, Lorna Loney.

There was a great turn out from Remarkable and many familiar faces.

It was a real thrill to welcome the Sitecore community to my home town of Dublin last week for this year’s SUGCON Europe, and it proved to be an incredibly interesting couple of days hearing from the Sitecore team and Partners from around the world, not just Europe.

Not only did I get to attend my first SUGCON Europe, but I gave a talk on the major elements and functionality of XM Cloud. Hopefully the first of many.

Over the two days there was lots of talk about XM Cloud, of course. And lots of talk about Ai, which is also not a surprise, but this was not just fluffy, hyperbolic chatter that tends to flood LinkedIn. But some very practical and actionable real world examples. Along with some sneak peeks at upcoming functionality.

Here are some of my highlights.

DAY 1

Dave O’ Flanagan, Sitecore CEO

It was pretty special for Dave O’Flanagan’s first public appearance as Sitecore CEO to be in his home town of Dublin (snap, Dave!). Referencing his new role, Dave highlighted Sitecore’s renewed focus on the product, made apparent by the board’s decision to put a ‘product guy’ in charge. And while XM Cloud is definitely the future, Sitecore XP is going nowhere.

There was a great analogy of the monolithic versus composable approach being compared to the battle between fossil fuel cars and electric vehicles, i.e. there are a lot of people moving to EVs, and they will ultimately be the future, but many people still like their current internal combustion engine motor, and that’s OK too.

Dave also teased some of the upcoming A/B testing features coming directly to XM Cloud, which is some very welcome functionality.

Roger Connolly, Sitecore Chief Product Officer

With Dave taking the big job, Roger has moved up to CPO and, as part of the keynote, he gave us a fantastic run-through of some of the AI capabilities coming to XM Cloud, such as being able to import your brand guidelines and getting suggestions for everything from page layouts and components, to personalisation and testing ideas. This stuff genuinely looks really impressive.

Pieter Brinkman, Sitecore VP Product Marketing & Developer Relations

We were also treated to a barnstorming demo from Pieter on how easy it is to build and connect Forms in XM Cloud. In the space of a few minutes, Pieter built out a basic landing page, a Form, created a web hook using Sitecore Connect (with some help from OpenAI), set up an Email List in Sitecore Send, and set up a Campaign to send to subscribers. There was a competition with a Wheel of Fortune and some prizes to keep the audience engaged. I didn’t win the Sitecore-branded hammock though, but we won’t talk about that.

Timothy Marsh (EPAM Solution Architect) and Beatrice Bobillon (Sitecore Customer Success EMEA)

Any successful project is built on a foundation of collaboration. Without the right people, doing the right things, and being able to work together, a project can be doomed.

Tim and Beatrice talked us through how a CSM, a Partner, and a PTA – the “trifecta of a successful project” of the session title — can work together to deliver success. 

• CSM – Retention and Customer Adoption
• Partner – Project implementation and project management
• PTA – Assist the Partner with technical advise

Vaishali Dialani, Konabos Senior Customer Experience Strategist

Vaishali kept the momentum of the afternoon going with a high-energy look at the importance of customer experience on brand perception and how you can use relevant content to continuously improve the customer experience with personalisation. 

Rick Bauer (Sitecore Global Director of Customer Transformation) and Corey Smith (Corey Smith Consulting)

Finishing up Day 1 in the Marketing Breakout room, Rick and Corey had the audience in their pocket with some real world, tried-and-tested advice for how to use ChatGPT to create campaign content via Content Hub Operations, with lots of practical tips on what to do, and just as importantly, what not to do. As impressive as this was, the caveat that was hammered home throughout the talk was that AI-generated content should only be used for a first draft, and that a human touch is always needed to take things to the next level.

DAY 2 

Jacqueline Baxter, Sitecore Director of Experience Design & Content Strategy

Sitecore content guru Jackie (and her haunted laptop) took us on a journey of how modular content can be used across pages and channels to improve content engagement, while also making it more efficient on the brand side. Lots of useful advice, including how important it is to audit your content every now and then, even if it is a pain. As Jackie says, “If Rome can build a Metro, you can do a content audit”.

Sarah O’Reilly, Sitecore Sales Engineering Team Lead

I’ve been to Sarah’s demos before, and this one was as good as ever. In the space of a 15-minute lightning talk, Sarah took us through how Sitecore Personalize and CDP can be used to personalise content based on Audience using custom conditions, how to personalise on a one-to-one level using decision models, as well as what the new A/B testing features of XM Cloud can do. Brilliant stuff.

Anna Pokorna, ACTUM Digital Key Account Manager

Anna took us through two really interesting real world examples of using AI in an automatic translation tool integrated with Sitecore Content Hub, as well as a cool chatbot that substituted for the search function of an XP website.

Megan Mueller Jensen, Portfolio Specialist at Perficient

Megan had the room in the palm of her hand with some really practical SEO tips for a Headless world, including using canonicals for components used on multiple pages and schema tags for things like product specs so that search engines know what’s what. Megan also showed us things like Google’s Search Labs tool and graced us with some pearls of wisdom like “One of the most important things you can do is make your client feel smart”.

Chris Purcell (Sitecore Senior Product Marketing Manager), Surya Shanmugam (Sitecore Product Marketer) and Sana Kamalmaz (Kajoo Director of Digital Strategy)

Chris and Surya took us through some of the new AI features coming to XM Cloud, building on what Roger Connolly had teased the day before. We were also treated to a really impressive demo from Sana Kamalmaz of Kajoo’s visual development platform, and in particular, their XM Cloud migration tool which can even import from Figma. Some incredibly useful functionality is coming down the track.

Emanuel Popescu (Platform Lead, Zurich) and Katharina Luger (Sitecore Solution Architect)

Zurich Insurance Group has a LOT of websites, so migrating from XP to XM Cloud is a truly gargantuan task. Emanuel and Katharina presented an impressive case study on how Zurich went about this, the challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned. 

— — — — — 

Overall, it was an incredible few days, with some brilliant content from the Sitecore team and Partners. Great things having been done. And some great things coming down the track.

I’m absolutely delighted to make it 3 years in a row as a Sitecore Strategy MVP!

Especially so being able to share it with my fellow Sagittarius and Remarkable Group colleagues, Ian MacArthur, Christine Bookless, Issy Stephen, and Shahla Matar.

Really excited to get stuck into some of the new features and tools over the next year!

I was delighted to feature in Jonathan Corely’s roundup of the best Sitecore Marketing and Digital Experience content of 2023 along with my fellow Sagittarians James Gray and Issy Stephen.

We had a serious output of Sitecore-specific content in 2023 at Sagittarius and the content that made it onto Jonathan’s list covers a broad spectrum ranging from Sitecore Send (myself), Sitecore XM Cloud (Issy) and Artificial Intelligence (James).

Read the full list here: Best of 2023: Top 20 Assets for Sitecore Marketers and Digital Experience Strategists.

It was fantastic to welcome the UK Sitecore User Group community to our new(ish) London office in Shoreditch last night for the lastest SUG UK meet-up featuring some fantastic talks from the below Sitecore gurus:

• ‘Sitecore Content Search: Building a frontend for Sitecore Search results’ – Sean Carter, Head of Sitecore Development at Sagittarius

• ‘Streaming Seamlessly: Integrating Content Hub with your existing video streaming platform’ – Julius Angwenyi, Sitecore Architect at Avanade

• ‘From JSS to Headless SXA’ – Alex Washtell, Freelance Sitecore Consultant at Kasaku